We arrived in Centralia, WA yesterday afternoon just a little after 4:00 – in the snow! Yikes!! It’s supposed to turn to rain overnight, I sure hope that’s right. We were watching some TV reports from Portland, OR and it was pretty bad there with a lot of fender-benders due to the snow. We’re still planning on leaving here tomorrow and heading down to Canyonville, OR to stay at the Seven Feathers RV Resort. We’ll have to reevaluate that depending on the weather.
The iconic Empress Hotel dominates Victoria’s Inner Harbour
Apart from the snow, the rest of the day was just great. We had a very nice trip over on the MV Coho from Victoria to Port Angeles and the drive from there down to Olympia was a dream compared to our previous trips when we had to drive thru Seattle and Tacoma. We’ll definitely be taking this route from now on.
The MV Coho offers a totally different view of Victoria landmarks
The Coho was very interesting. We haven’t taken a trip on it since sometime in the ‘70s as we’ve always taken BC Ferries to the mainland. The first thing I noticed is how small the vehicle deck is compared to the huge BC Ferries ships – you are packed in like sardines on the Coho! The trucks and RV’s load first so that made it quite easy driving on and getting parked. It just so happened that yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the MV Coho, so we all got free coffee and cake – a little bonus!
One of the many luxury resort hotels on Victoria’s inner harbour
Crossing the border was amazingly easy. In Victoria, US Border Agents checked and scanned our passports, asked a few questions about where we were going and that was it. As we left the ferry in Port Angeles, we again were met by Border Agents as we exited the terminal. They asked a few questions about what kind of food we had in our 5’er, including dog food, but they waved us right through without ever looking inside – pretty simple.
The Victoria Clipper arriving from Seattle as we departed
Leaving Port Angeles, we took Hwy 101 east for about 30 minutes and then branched off to Hwy 104 to cross over the new Hood Canal Floating Bridge – that was kind of neat as it’s a very long bridge and since it’s floating it seems like you’re almost driving on water.
The MV Coho packs cars in the stern of the ship utilizing every space available
Once across the Hood Canal we turned south onto Hwy 3 which is a beautiful 4 lane freeway that took us just south of Tacoma where we joined good old I-5 for the first time this trip! We drove thru Olympia, the capital city of Washington St., and stopped at Lacey, WA around 3:00 – just 20 minutes from our destination of Centralia.
Approaching the Hood Canal Floating Bridge
I wanted to stop at Lacey so I could pop into a local Verizon store and pick up a USB760 air card and sign-up for month-to-month broadband service while we are in the US. What should have been at most a 10 minute job turned into 30 minutes because of a series of goofs and glitches the sales guy made while setting up my new account. In the end, everything was resolved and when he asked me if I wanted him to install the new card on my laptop, which I had with me, I kindly thanked him and said I would deal with it later myself. I installed it last night and it connected immediately and works great.
This is pretty much the middle of this long floating bridge
We have to drive thru Portland, OR Wednesday morning and it is still snowing pretty hard there as of 11pm Tuesday – the I-5 is a mess in some spots. We’ll just have to see how it goes – if it’s not safe, we’ll just stay here for another day.
We’re staying at the Midway RV Park in Centralia. It’s an extremely nice place to stay – nice wide, level, concrete sites and the washroom facilities are spotless. It offers free cable TV and “smokin’ hot WiFi” – I give the WiFi service here a 10 out of 10 – it’s always terrific! Have a great Wednesday, and thanks again for visiting.
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